Friday 5 for May 19: Fences

What’s something you were unreasonably forbidden from doing when you were a kid?
I was twelve when MTV went live. I remember it. As we now know, MTV changed everything. I didn’t know it at the time, of course. All I knew was that here was a way to combine two of my favorite things: music and television. My dad was offended by the concept, explaining that music was meant to be something participatory, not something you passively observed on the TV. Which is interesting because I think for most kids who were forbidden from watching MTV, it was because of the content, not because of the cognitive, philosophical, ontological implications. My dad turned out to be right (in theory), of course. But TV commercials exploiting classic rock songs are just as guilty and perhaps so is Guitar Hero. For that matter, perhaps so is Disney’s Fantasia.

In what area of your life would you say you have especially conservative boundaries?
I’ve got a lot of them, but one that leaps to mind is physicality in romantic relationships. I am a notoriously slow mover, and I like it that way. I’m so old now that I actually prefer cuddling to smooching anyway, most of the time.

In what area of your life would you say you have especially permissive boundaries?
As a borderline anarchist (I can hear some people who know me well saying,”Borderline?”) and a philosophical libertarian, I have extremely permissive boundaries for acceptable expression over the airwaves. I pretty much think you should be allowed to say just about anything you want, whenever you want.

In what area of your life do you routinely go over the line?
There are two closely related areas in my life in which I do this: work and sleep. When I work, I work too much. And then when I allow myself time to relax, I relax too much. During especially hectic times at work, I’ve been known to get thirteen or fourteen hours of sleep on the Saturdays that follow. These extremes are certainly not healthy and I’m going to make an effort to moderate the behaviors.

How many keys do you have on your key ring?
I keep three sets of keys. On my work keyring I have five keys. On my house-car keyring, I have two keys. Then I have a keyring with keys I need but almost never use (you know…keys to other people’s places, for example, or to locks I seldom open) which has about six keys.